CPERL Publication Alert: Family-Centered Care Coordination Improves Outcomes for Children Enrolled in Early Intervention Services

Introduction

Mary Khetani and colleagues at the Colorado School of Public Health have teamed up to publish a study from the AHRQ-funded project, titled Does Family-Centered Care Coordination Improve Outcomes for Children Enrolled in Early Intervention Services? An Analysis of Colorado's GO4IT Initiative in Health Services Research.

This publication reports that Colorado's family-centered care coordination initiative, Global Outcomes for Infants and Toddlers (GO4IT), improved family engagement with early intervention (EI) services and increased the likelihood of meeting goals during a plan of care. GO4IT is designed to target family-centered care coordination through the systematic use of family-centered assessments, incorporating assessment results into care plans, and collaboration with families on goal attainment using global measures of child function. Data on reasons a child exited the EI system was collected from Colorado's EI system and compared with Massachusetts' EI system. Results indicated that enrollment in GO4IT reduced the probability of family disengagement by up to 60%. Beth McManus presented an award-winning poster on these findings at a conference in Hawaii.

This team has submitted a subsequent study examining the mechanisms underlying the positive effects of family-centered care coordination on outcomes reported in this publication.